1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the management of customer relationships. More specifically, the present invention relates to the management, definition, application and execution of customer relationship plans to increase customer satisfaction, retention and profitability.
2. Description of the Related Art
For companies operating in today's dynamic and highly competitive markets, the development and maintenance of a comprehensive customer-oriented strategy is arguably the key to success. To maintain stability and growth of the business, companies must grow their customer base (customer acquisition), retain their existing customers (customer retention) and induce their existing customers to spend more (customer profitability). To retain and increase the profitability of customers, companies must ensure that its current customers remain loyal and satisfied with the products and services offered to them.
It is estimated that every five years, companies in the United States lose about 35% of their customer base by providing inadequate and untimely service to their customers. A purely reactive approach to the management of customer relationships has proven to be inadequate to achieve the twin goals of increasing both customer retention and profitability. Indeed, once certain customer business events (product returns, complaints, shipping delays, inadequate or unresponsive customer service, for example) have occurred, it may be too late to take effective remedial measures that will satisfy the customer. Therefore, it is desirable to treat customer relationships in a proactive manner, without waiting for the customer to communicate their dissatisfaction and/or without necessarily waiting for human interaction. However, not all customers can and should be treated equally, and such a proactive approach to customer care relationships should preferably treat each customer differently according to their customer status or according to some other definable criteria. Doing so increases cost effectiveness in the management of customers, increases both customer loyalty and profitability and improves the timeliness of the vendor's response to customer response.
What are needed, therefore, are computer-implemented methods and systems for automatically managing and applying customer relationship plans. What are also needed are computer-implemented methods and systems for proactively responding to customer business events by applying one or more selected customer relationship plans and carrying out actions specified by the applied customer relationship plans.